Good People

by Nir Baram

  Meanwhile, in the compound they were organising a party to celebrate the conquest of Paris. The Polish workers scrubbed the courtyard again and again, built a wide wooden stage, and started to put up a gigantic tent. Every day trucks unloaded loudspeakers, wooden beams, lighting stands, chairs and tables. Wolfgang, who was chosen by secret ballot to run the festivities (ahead of Weller), announced that the artistic program would be extraordinary. Then he confessed to Thomas his braggadocio had got him into trouble again. He hadn’t the faintest idea how to carry out his brilliant program.

  That morning Thomas woke up despondent: for days he hadn’t done a thing to advance his plan. Perhaps his inactivity was a hint that he should give up on the idea of transferring the model to Kresling. Since he had always believed that his actions were strengthened by his rare creative talents, by his ambitions and his dreams, by his deep understanding of people’s motivations and the dynamics of power, he regarded submission to some abstract fear as a betrayal of Thomas Heiselberg and everything he had done in his life.

  He resolved to act, to take a risk: he shut himself up in his office, and composed a letter with a precise explanation why the model should be removed from the Foreign Office: the Foreign Office was now pushing the Madagascar plan, intervening in matters out of its jurisdiction, irking Heydrich and the SS and everyone who knew anything at all about Poland. Transfer of the model would be useful to Reichsmarschall Göring and the Haupttreuhandstelle Ost, and would enhance its reliability, since it would no longer be subject to the half-baked plans of Franz Rademacher and the Foreign Office. He didn’t bother to re-read the letter; in the afternoon he walked to Kresling’s office and put it on his desk. Back in his office, he sat in his armchair and his heart pounded. Voices within him shrieked impending disaster. But he was relieved too: he could not have acted differently.

  Too tense to concentrate, haunted by the image of Kresling reading his memorandum beneath the Dürer etching, he cancelled his meetings, locked the door, and wrote to Clarissa:

  My beloved, I expect huge changes in my status soon, but of course I can’t tell you about them now. Our plan to meet at the end of the summer can be confirmed. Apparently I am to receive a whole month of holidays. In general, if my plans go through, we can see each other regularly in the coming year.

  He imagined her skimming over his letter at her desk, her fingers playing with her hair, and now she was choosing a new sheet of paper; she always liked to write more than to read, and sometimes ignored his questions when she replied to him. Every time he wrote to her, he imagined the dust of battle swirling around him, as factions were briefly formed and shattered, while she dwelled in a white bubble—to touch her would be like touching a freshly painted wall with a sooty finger.

  In the evening, upon leaving the office, he was astonished to find it was empty. The air outside had cooled. On his right rose the lower part of the Jewish wall. It always seemed to pop up in front of him, wherever he turned. Even when he walked away from it, its red bricks seemed to stab his eyes from behind buildings or trees. He focused on the street corner where he would turn left and get away from the wall, but the streetlights dimmed his vision, and he no longer knew whether he was looking at the thing itself or at its reflection. He imagined that a wall quivered before him as well; he walked towards it but it receded. Rain began to fall. He was wearing a summer suit. The wind whistled into his body through a cold hole it drilled in the back of his neck. Soldiers stopped passers-by and examined their documents. He lengthened his stride, but that sight had deepened his sorrow. He remembered a phrase that Frau Stein used to say when she was asked how she was: ‘One and no other.’ As a boy he thought she was talking about God, and he even asked his mother which god Frau Stein believed in. His mother answered that she was referring to loneliness, not to God. In his teens that phrase would sometimes ring in his head: ‘One and no other’. Again he quickened his pace and almost ran down Jerozolimskie towards Nowy Swiat. Their compound towered up in his imagination; there would be no walls there.

  A soldier wrapped in a raincoat appeared before him.

  ‘I’m German,’ he said.

  ‘Documents, German!’ shouted the soldier.

  He fumbled in his jacket, pulled out his identification and waved it in the soldier’s face. ‘I’m German, understand? I’m not going to stand in the rain like a slave!’

  ‘You call this rain?’ the soldier grumbled. And retreated to the shadows.

  At the corner Thomas stopped and looked to his right down Nowy Swiat. There, dominating the horizon, shining above the roofs, was the wall. He stared helplessly at it.

  He recovered and lengthened his stride once more. Here was his building. Now, as if on their own, his steps resumed a familiar pace. He buttoned his jacket, and pushed sticky clumps of hair from his forehead. Someone could recognise him here. A small crowd was gathered around the gate, and he remembered: Wolfgang’s Paris Party…He couldn’t turn up in a sodden suit with his hair dripping with sweat. A quick glance at him would arouse revulsion in any cultured person. Could this be Heiselberg from the Foreign Office?

  He pushed through the crowd, relieved that none of his acquaintances was there, and passed rapidly through the entrance, planning to slip up to his apartment and put on a dinner jacket. (In honour of the event Wolfgang had confiscated a few dozen tuxedos from a department store and distributed them to tenants.) Thomas walked over to the white tent that was decorated with colourful ribbons and flags of the Reich.

  ‘Thomas!’ Wolfgang was standing at the entrance to the tent, a brilliant figure in a white tuxedo. He was holding a small tray of brimming flutes, ‘Straight from Champagne,’ he boasted. ‘All the wines and cheeses at the party are from France! My friends there made a big effort for us.’

  Thomas sipped the sparkling drink. ‘Bless you, my brilliant friend,’ he intoned.

  Astonishment flickered in Wolfgang’s eyes, and, as always when he was hesitant, the tip of his tongue curled over his front teeth. ‘You’re the man I was waiting for. Tonight is your big night.’

  ‘Really?’ Thomas stuttered. The bright light whipped his face and he felt that his flaws were visible to everyone.

  ‘Of course,’ answered Wolfgang magnanimously. ‘You thought we wouldn’t pay up? That we’d run away with the money? We’re honourable men.’ He withdrew an envelope from his breast pocket and handed it to Thomas. ‘Exactly one thousand Reichsmark, between 14 and 16 June, what an extraordinary nose for history! You beat us all.’

  Thomas gripped the envelope. ‘Thanks,’ he said. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed a group of officers playing quoits. About five metres away a short man in a broad-brimmed hat was playing a Polish folk song on the accordion. One of the officers twirled a quoit in his hand, measured the distance to the musician and threw it—to the laughter of his friends—at the accordion player’s neck.

  ‘Is that part of the artistic program?’ Thomas asked Wolfgang.

  ‘Not at all,’ Wolfgang answered nervously. ‘I don’t know them. They just showed up here. The news about my Paris party seems to have spread like wildfire.’ A few figures enveloped in smoke passed by. ‘My friend, I’m a bit insulted by your lack of trust. The artistic program tonight is in the finest German tradition. They wanted me to perform crass songs like “The Watch on the Rhine”, but I told Kresling and the rest we wouldn’t stoop so low.’

  Wolfgang apparently expected him to ask which songs would be played, but Thomas said nothing, waiting for his chance to sneak into his apartment. Maybe he wouldn’t come back to the party at all. Finally Wolfgang turned away, somewhat disappointed, and Thomas walked through the courtyard among the white dress shirts, the black ties and the black dress uniforms. He raised a hand and touched his own shirt—like touching plaster. He was disgusted.

  Too late he noticed that he was walking right towards Weller, who was with a baby-faced man wearing glasses, and whose shoulders were so broad that his shirt seemed to be suspended from a
hanger.

  ‘Heiselberg!’ Weller called. ‘I want you to meet Raul von Thadden, a friend from my student days in Heidelberg. Unfortunately I could only dream about his grades.’

  The man extended his hand to Thomas, ‘It’s a great honour to meet you, sir.’

  His pleasant baritone reminded Thomas of the broadcaster Fritzsche, and he was constrained to look straight into the man’s eyes. His stylish appearance—hair coated with brilliantine, stiff tie, dinner jacket hanging off him with casual elegance—aroused resentment in Thomas. If they would just let him get out of here at last, he would look like him, and even better.

  ‘You look tired, Heiselberg,’ Weller declared. ‘A hard day?’

  He wanted to excuse himself, but von Thadden started talking. ‘In the past I supported the Social Democratic Party, and when my cousin Eberhard von Thadden—I’m sure you’ve heard about him in the Foreign Office—joined the National Socialist Party, I refused to speak with him.’ He held forth like someone used to imposing authority, as though his right to pontificate and your obligation to listen were ceremonial rules, as though you were an uncouth idiot if you didn’t know his tribe. Weller, von Thadden and their ilk thought that what they had to say was original, but in fact they were masters of the obvious. ‘I spent the day with Georg here in the courtyard. We helped prepare for the party, and when we spoke with the Slav workers I understood how true National Socialism is. Among them were someone from a rich family of leather dealers, the son of a professor, as well as a trolley driver and a fishmonger—and they all received the same pay. The Social Democrats spoke eloquently about equality, but here is the living evidence! My son has been writing the same things to me about his unit in the Wehrmacht.’

  ‘Shattering social classes isn’t a universally good idea,’ cautioned Weller.

  This time Thomas agreed: von Thadden’s socialist prattle sounded childish to him.

  ‘Georg always leans towards conservative positions,’ von Thadden declared. ‘I am interested in Herr Heiselberg’s opinion.’ He turned to Thomas. ‘I read the model with some interest, but didn’t manage to infer its author’s world view.’

  ‘The model is me,’ answered Thomas, ‘and what isn’t lucid in it isn’t lucid in me.’

  A faint chortle came out of von Thadden’s mouth. Thomas concluded the man had that kind of tiresome arrogance that comes across as sincerity. A vague memory connected with Eberhard von Thadden disturbed him.

  ‘When in fact did you join the Party, sir?’ von Thadden asked him.

  ‘Father joined in the mid-twenties,’ Thomas answered, trying to recall the von Thadden cousin. ‘He was very active in the Berlin branch. In those years I was immersed in my studies and later in work. From 1929 on I voted for the Nazi Party out of respect for my father, and I got my membership card in 1936.’

  A smile crawled across Weller’s face, and his cheeks puffed out again. They had composed that speech together while writing the model, and even though he had never asked, he didn’t believe that Thomas had voted for the Party. But as for his father, there were solid facts, Party veterans full of respect, letters of recognition.

  The activity around them increased, the buzz of the lights, the sizzle of the roasting meat. He had given them more than enough time. ‘Now, gentlemen, I must attend to some arrangements.’

  Weller’s eyes penetrated Thomas from behind his spectacles, as if he had found a previously invisible weakness in him. Thomas met his gaze with a cavalier defiance, but Weller remained calm and unblinking.

  Thomas suddenly understood. Weller had heard about the meeting with Kresling.

  ‘Your friend Kresling is here, too,’ said Weller coldly. He took von Thadden’s sleeve and they were swallowed up in the crowd. Had he already reported to the Foreign Office that Thomas wanted to transfer the model, of which they were so proud, to another agency? Thomas was appalled, but then he calmed down: if Weller had done that, he could always deny everything. Kresling wouldn’t take Weller’s side, and even if he did he hadn’t told Kresling explicitly that he wanted to transfer the model to the Haupttreuhandstelle Ost.

  His body prickled with anxiety: his letter was already in Kresling’s hands. His manoeuvre had been dangerous and unnecessary. After all, his situation wasn’t bad; why had he taken such a risk? Apparently intrigue was something that dwelled independently in his body and directed his actions. He was heading for the abyss. Perhaps he was already there.

  The wooden stage in the centre of the courtyard was surrounded by a crowd. A black grand piano stood on it. Wolfgang leaped onto the stage and tapped the square microphone. ‘Gentlemen, I’d like some quiet,’ he called out merrily. He named a few notables who were present, read out a message from the district governor and praised the achievements of the Wehrmacht in Western Europe as if describing a charming prank.

  Meanwhile Thomas was trying to push through the crowd to the stairway, on which masses of people were standing and sitting—not even a pin could slip through.

  ‘The National Socialist League of Jurists has been so kind as to lend us their best singer of Lieder,’ Wolfgang shouted. ‘It is my honour to invite Raul von Thadden to the stage. Likewise I wish to thank Dr Georg Weller from the Foreign Office for his musical advice. At the piano is our comrade Lang from the SD.’

  He heard cries of joy. Von Thadden took to the stage with graceful steps, removed his grey jacket and placed it on a chair. Thomas watched Wolfgang as he stepped down and stood next to Weller. The two exchanged smiling whispers, and Wolfgang put his arm around Weller. He had never seen them together, and while they were vying to organise the Paris party he had the impression they despised each other. Now he recognised the catastrophe he had brought down upon himself.

  To his surprise, even though he understood that he was caught in the trap they had set for him, he felt relieved: what he had feared so strangely had come to pass. At least he had proof that he wasn’t delusional; now he could emerge from the whispering forest where he had been wandering. He was back in the world of action. He could plan how to outflank Weller and his friends. He was already going over his strategies. Weller couldn’t defeat him.

  But was he seeing the situation correctly? Weller had laid the trap, predicted his actions precisely, brilliantly orchestrated events. He remembered their first meeting and his impression—it had faded as Weller’s weaknesses were revealed—that the man could be a dangerous rival. Was it still possible to conciliate him? Weller had already tightened the noose; nothing would shake it loose. Not clever explanations, requests for a second chance, reminiscences about their collective endeavours.

  Von Thadden had begun with Schubert and was already at the end of the first song.

  Es ruft noch manche Schlacht.

  Bald ruh’ ich wohl und schlafe fest,

  Herzliebste, gute Nacht!*

  He bowed and glared at the audience, as if to ask: Did you understand that brilliant, subtle performance?

  Wolfgang returned to the stage, thanked Dr von Thadden and took a sheet of paper out of his pocket. ‘In order to appreciate the present day,’ he read, ‘we must remember our past, the cradle of our greatness. There were times when the French conquered our land, and we knew distress, shame and weakness. But even then voices arose out of the German spirit claiming a glorious future. Germany shall forever treasure the words of Fichte, the clearest voice from those days. While the people moaned, Johann Fichte taught our fathers to believe in their greatness, and I would like to read from his Addresses to the German People.’

  Thomas tried in vain to steady his trembling hand. He gaped at Weller. With peacock pride he had straightened his shoulders when his name was mentioned. Weller always believed that Germany owed him a great debt, and only malice stood between the nation and the truth. Wolfgang was still prattling away on stage. There was a kind of crazed avarice in his eyes. He and his chatter seemed filthy to Thomas—that naked desire for greatness, exposed to everyone. How could he have ever been fond of W
olfgang?

  The crowd headed for the bar and for the tables, laid with trays of cheese, vegetables, fish and bread. A slight drizzle began to drip on the tent. Thomas yearned for high winds, a downpour that would scatter the tent and its notables in every direction. He tried again to move towards the stairs but had no idea how he would get through.

  Two of the three Polish girls passed by. They were as pretty as ever, but he had imagined their appearance at the party as a more splendid spectacle: silk dresses, fox-fur coats, tiaras and diamond necklaces. In fact, aside from their fluffy hairdos, which reminded him of Pola Negri in Hotel Imperial, almost nothing in them had changed. Up close their black dresses proved to be made of simple cotton, little runs could be seen in their sheer stockings, and the pointy tips of their shoes were scuffed. From the cut of the necklines and the line of the hips, he concluded that a seamstress had copied patterns from French magazines. The white glare of the lights had dried the rouge on their cheeks as if grains of sand had stuck to them.

  ‘Young ladies, where is your sister? Without her you can’t be Gorgons!’ called out a short, solid officer, to the laughter of his friends.

  They turned to him in a single motion. ‘Be careful,’ one said in good German, with a heavy accent, ‘if you look at us too much, you’ll turn into a Nazi officer.’